YCLSA Commends the Competition Commission on the criminal activities of the Banks

16 February 2017

The Young Communist League of South Africa [uFasimba] welcomes the Competitions Commission&#039;s referral of the case of banks that were found to have colluded in currency trading to the Tribunal for prosecution.

The consistency of the Commission in investigating a case of price fixing and market allocation in the trading of foreign currency pairs involving the Rand since April 2015 has to be unreservedly commended. While private firms and industries cry foul about the government hindering competition through its labour laws and targeted interventions in the economy, they however find it not wrong for them to distort the very law of supply and demand which is the basis of a market economy capitalist relations.

The Commission found that the &#039;respondents manipulated the price of bids and offers through agreements to refrain from trading and creating fictitious bids and offers at particular times&#039;. We have always maintained as the YCLSA that this is the deeper crisis of monopoly capitalism which has outgrown its stage of competitiveness prevalent in the period between the 1950&#039;s and 1970&#039;s. Doomsayers have often dismissed us by saying we are merely being ideological, yet what is happening is reflective of our long-held perspective.

As such, the national laws governing how private entities must practice fair competition will always be undermined by monopoly industries, thereby preventing small and medium enterprises from participating in the economy.

While the Commission has done a sterling work, without the political will of the political leadership to tamper with the capitalist mode of production that privileges a few we will only scratch the surface of the rot while we need to unearth and deal with it once and for all. This becomes worse when political leaders who are supposed to service the people are share-holders of such monopoly capital industries, including commercial banks, thereby creating a dependent compradorial bourgeoisie which is the direct enemy of national development and people&#039;s empowerment.

What could be one of the far-reaching solutions to the crisis at hand is the creation of a state bank that will be the custodian of the national accounts [and monies]. And commensurate policies be put in place to govern the movement of money in and out of the country. In other words, the capacity to control capital flows through progressive foreign exchange rate policy approaches.